The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
A Memoir
Chapter One
Burns Unit
The only downside of my mother's working was that it put a little pressure on
her with regard to running the home and particularly with regard to dinner,
which frankly was not her strong suit anyway. My mother always ran late and was
dangerously forgetful into the bargain. You soon learned to stand aside about
ten to six every evening, for it was then that she would fly in the back door,
throw something in the oven, and disappear into some other quarter of the house
to embark on the thousand other household tasks that greeted her each evening.
In consequence she nearly always forgot about dinner until a point slightly
beyond way too late. As a rule you knew it was time to eat when you could hear
baked potatoes exploding in the oven.
We didn't call it the kitchen in our house. We called it the Burns Unit.
"It's a bit burned," my mother would say apologetically at every meal,
presenting you with a piece of meat that looked like something - a much-loved
pet perhaps - salvaged from a tragic house fire. "But I think I scraped of ... read full excerpt from The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid ebook
